The School Reform Commission on Wednesday approved a new charter school to be located in the Parkside neighborhood in West Philadelphia. KIPP Parkside is scheduled to open during the 2019-2020 academic year with grades K-4.

The school’s opening was one of the stipulations the SRC placed on the approval. The school’s application proposed opening in the 2018-2019 school year. The SRC also limited the school to grades K-4, adding that it could expand to the proposed K-8 if it performed well.

KIPP Parkside garnered unanimous approval from the SRC, which denied the applications of two other schools – the Friendship Whittier Charter School in the West Allegheny neighborhood and the Deep Roots Charter School in Harrowgate. Only three proposals made it through the full process this year. The evaluation reports for all three proposed schools are available here.

About a third of Philadelphia’s approximately 130,000 public school students attend charter schools, second only to Detroit among big cities.

The School Reform Commission is scheduled to vote on three proposed charter schools, including one in West Philly, during a special meeting this Wednesday (Feb. 8) beginning at 4 p.m. at the auditorium at the school district offices at 440 N. Broad Street.

The meeting is the final step in the charter review process. The three proposed schools include KIPP Parkside that would be located in the West Parkside neighborhood. Under the proposal, which can be found here, the new school would open for the 2018-2019 school year and have a projected enrollment of 860 students by 2022. The district had several questions about the fee structure that KIPP, which runs four other charters in the city, set up for the school, according to an evaluation report released last month.  Continue Reading